Peter Gleick Admits to Deception in Obtaining Heartland Climate Files. Wow!
At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.
I take this to mean Gleick was named in materials sent to him.
In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.
I take this to mean what Gleick received is what Heartland sent to him. The implication is the “fake-memo” was included in the email. Maybe I lack imagination but it seems to me this contradicts what Heartland has said.
My reading is that Gleick says that he received the fake memo in the snail mail and that this prompted him to obtain the actual documents. Doesn’t seem like bottom’s been reached on this story.
Gleick has essentially confessed to:
Identity theft,
Computer fraud,
Libel,
and defamation
it doesn’t matter that someone else sent the strategy document. It is not supported by the other documents and, as you pointed out, it is defamatory.
Correct Steve. I think he is purposely putting the snail mail info out there. If it was truly mailed wouldn’t the item have fold marks in the scan? I know they will show up if pronounced and if it has been around for awhile.
And don’t tell me someone would mail him a two page memo in an 8/12 x 11 envelope.
Not buying the straw man.
I note he still defends the memo.
If he did fake it, defending the memo is doing absolutely no favors to his warmist friends… because he’s just encouraged them to continue to promote it, and get themselves on the hook for even more damages.
Another thought,
He will at some point have to produce the “original” strategy document. Most printers now leave forensic data on the output. What do you suppose the chances are that the original was printed on an Epson printer.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Nothing Gleick says can be trusted.
Far from it. Makes little sense re the ‘fake’ document given that no-one disputes the reality of the others. PG received ‘additional documents’, implicitly including (and therefore taking no personal respnsibility for) the fake doc? have I misunderstood his mea culpa?
Gleick: “At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategyâ€
Question – is there anything in the strategy doc reference stuff that has happened since the beginning of 2012? Or any documents or donations that had not occurred at the time that Gleick was supposed to have received it.
Just wanting to check and verify of course – timeline becomes pretty important here.
Copner (Comment #90866)
Thing is we can tell if it was mailed or not. There should be artifacts in the scan that would be picked up to show handeling and if it was folded. I highly doubt it was mailed in a large envelope ( if it was mailed at all )
But your point is correct. We pegged Gleicks writing style almost immediately and now it was mailed to him? Interesting.
This is the straw man he needs to get the heat off….problem is if HI pursues..they can get his hard drive or any other drive. And he can delete all he wants it will still be there.
Yes, he’s claiming that he received the fake document in the mail and fraudulently obtained the other documents in an effort to substantiate it. Amazingly enough, a couple of threads down, someone mentioned that the only way the defenders of the fraudulent document had a leg to stand on was if they had that first … and then obtained the other documents to verify it.
So, is Gliek trying to maintain the viability of the forged document as his attempted deception crashes around him? Or was he simply the dupe of the actual forger? Either way, he’s clearly not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.
If he destroys the hard-drive or destroys the paper document, he’s dug himself a deeper hole. That’s likely to be considered destruction of evidence.
In a civil suit, the court would penalize him, most likely by limiting his defense, maybe even by refusing to allow him to claim the document really existed
In a criminal case, it would be an even more serious matter.
If he really did receive the document via post. The original physical document, the envelope, and any electronic files he made by scanning it, are now Peter Gleick’s most valuable possessions.
Gliek could have mailed it to himself.
> Gliek could have mailed it to himself
Why would he do that, unless he expected to be caught?
Glieck did not mail it to himself. He would have put it in an envelope and folded it…and it would show on the scan
Copner,
“The original physical document, the envelope, and any electronic files he made by scanning it, are now Peter Gleick’s most valuable possessions.”
Don’t worry, the originals have been ‘lost’. Dr. Gleick would be happy to provide you with scanned copies, of course (date adjusted).
Dude (Comment #90880),
Too valuable a document… 9 X 12 envelope of course.
Sorry, that was a joke, but at this point almost anything is possible with him. Don’t forget his book review.
Nyq Only (Comment #90879)
“However the document appears to have been scanned for the purpose of OCR and rendered as PDF in which the text can be selected”
Good point. Considering I still think this is his hail mary pass.
He is creating this straw man for the sole purpose of justifying his actions and obsolving himself of the most damning document
What I find most ironic about Revkin’s reporting of Gleick’s confession, is his failure to acknowledge his own role (along with that of his U.K. counterparts) by jumping to publish without any due diligence or attempt to verify.
Does he seriously think that media reporting on climate/environmental/sustainability issues has not also sustained a deep self-inflicted wound?!
Will we see similar acknowledgments and apologies from Revkin, Hickman, Goldenberg, Black and their ilk? Or will they simply carry on – pretending that there is no egg on their respective faces?!
What a grade A moron.
Seems to me the document was either faked by PG after he got the other info, or is real.
The disclosure email that Gleick sent to the blogs read:-
——————————–
Dear Friends (15 of you):
In the interest of transparency, I think you should see these files from the Heartland Institute. Look especially at the 2012 fundraising and budget documents, the information about donors, and compare to the 2010 990 tax form. But other things might also interest or intrigue you. This is all I have. And this email account will be removed after I send.
——————————–
Why did he not mention in that email that the strategy document had been obtained separately from the other documents? And was unverified from an anonymous source?
Why also does he state unequivocally in that email that “these files [are] from the Heartland Institute.” When he supposedly had doubts about 1 of the files?
Is this email entirely consistent with his confession?
The problem with his “limited modified hangout” is that Steven Mosher identified the FORGERY as being in Gleick’s style.
Is Dr. Gleick the type of person to keep the Strategy Memo to himself? Would he not have contacted and shared its contents to others?
> Does he seriously think that media reporting on climate/environmental/sustainability issues has not also sustained a deep self-inflicted wound?!
Who knows what Revkin thinks. But some greens are already congratulating Gleick on his boldness and bravery… there’s one on Revkin’s blog, which begins “Peter Gleick is standing up for the nobility of science”. I am not making this up, see for yourself.
So Joshua, where are you?
Got any issues with Gleick’s “tribalism”?
lucia, I believe your interpretation at the end of your post is wrong. You say:
There are two relevant sentences from Gleick:
Note the two phrases I made bold. The first says Gleick received additional material, meaning he says he had material beforehand. He then says he sent the documents he had received. The important thing here is he doesn’t refer to where he received the documents he sent. This means he is not limiting which documents he’s referring to. That means his comment can easily mean he sent the documents he received from multiple sources to the journalists.
I don’t see any implication Heartland sent him the fake-memo.
David Jay (Comment #90898)
Yeah….I wonder where Joshua has been……..I think we have a double agent…..
Hilary, as I observe at CA, Revkin has deleted his blog post that helped disseminate the story. Revkin linked to this blog post in his tweet here. I linked at CA to a page showing all the references to the now deleted blog post.
“Well done to those who suggested Gleick earlier.”
But a core suggestion was that he fabricated the strategy document.
“I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.”
He’s been honest enough to come clean on the rest so why lie about that, especially as law enforcement will doubtlessly be involved and will in all likelihood delve into that subject with a fine toothcomb?
Wow, talk about shooting himself in the foot. Gleick was always a bit too Romm-esque for my taste, but I wasn’t expecting this.
“He’s been honest enough to come clean on the rest so why lie about that, especially as law enforcement will doubtlessly be involved and will in all likelihood delve into that subject with a fine toothcomb?”
This is a good point, but people sometimes have fall back lies…
On the other hand, he’s had time to think about this and devise a plan (probably in consultation with others). I would say he either did not write the memo or is nearly certain that he will never be outed as the memo’s author.
The only important question here is “How does this news affect estimates of climate sensitivity?”
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. 🙂 You guys have fun, it’s bedtime for me.
He’s been honest enough to come clean on the rest so why lie about that, especially as law enforcement will doubtlessly be involved and will in all likelihood delve into that subject with a fine toothcomb?
1. “He’s been honest enough to…” commit identity fraud, steal documents, distribute stolen documents, and distribute a forged defamatory document. An appeal to Gleick’s honesty at this point is not very convincing.
2. He says he “made no changes or alterations” to the original communication. However, at no point does he deny being the one who originally wrote it.
3. Term for the day: “Modified limited hangout” (wiki).
Don B,
“Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.”
Or, fool me once, shame on you…
The weird thing about the whole story is how someone who is educated and supposedly intelligent could even imagine he could pull this off without being found out. Makes me think a) he is really stooopid, or b) his mind is so addled by climate hysteria that he can’t think straight, or c) both the above.
.
This sorry episode brings to mind the “ethical lapses” (interfering with peer review, pressuring editors, blackballing/ostracizing other scientists, etc.) revealed in the UEA emails. All evidence available to date is that there are a lot of professionally unethical people involved in climate science. Their desire for specific policy outcomes seems to trump everything else. Little wonder lots of people do not trust what climate scientists say. As I have said many times before, political problems usually have only political solutions. To me, the solution is obvious: defund most of them, and hold the rest to rigorous standards of accountability: a lot more data, a lot fewer models, and a lot fewer hysterical ‘projections’.
Well, it’s a little off-topic from the most important question, which is whether Gleick really wrote the climate strategy document (but not admitting it) — but here’s a comment at Revkin’s: “Peter Gleick is standing up for the nobility of science. He deserves support for doing so. […] At this moment, I want to salute Peter Gleick. […]”
Ye gods.
HaroldW (Comment #90912)
Wow who are the “deniers” now. HAHA
Boris (Comment #90909)
February 20th, 2012 at 8:53 pm
Well, it doesn’t, of course. It does affect the level of confidence that reasonable people should have in strident climate advocates like Dr. Gleick. Maybe you can see that, maybe you can’t. But lots of people will see that.
@Copner (90897)
Sometimes I wonder if Revkin does think! … and, yes, I did see that comment verging on a call for beatification of Gleick.
The other interesting part of Gleick’s “confession”, IMHO, is that it seemed to be written in the unmistakable – and ubiquitous – “key of Mann” i.e. ‘well, yes, I was wrong to do this; but it doesn’t affect the “truth” of my claims about the evil forces of darkness (which I’m repeating here just for good measure)’
A cynical person, may view this as setting the pieces for a defense. He is admitting receiving the “fake document” first.(it is the only one he is named in) From a different source than the HI documents.. he now has a legitimate reason to have scanned the “fake document” and distributed it, without being the author of the fake document.
Now it depends on the manner he anonymously received, the document(left under his door, post, email, carrier pidgeon, arrow through window with note attached) As to what kind of trail, if any there is to follow to the alleged forger…
Or he’s a saint crusading against the evil empire (cues darth vadar music) that is the heartland institute. And has nobly fallen on his sword to save colleagues from suspicion.
Who knows. been entertaining lurking here anyway.
Zeke (Comment #90906),
You are very young.
An alternate theory.
A real Heartland insider, henceforth rHi, wants Gleick destroyed. rHi has access to preliminary drafts of the 2012 budget etc. rHi studies Gleick’s informal writing style, i.e. blog posts, comments, tweets, not Pacific Institute reports or Forbes columns, composes the fake strategy document, and mails it to Gleick, all with gloves on.
Gleick is intrigued, very intrigued. What he has is a smoking gun that will demolish Heartland but, without corroboration, worthless. So he goes looking for corroboration in a very unorthodox and unfortunate way. Then he obtains, directly from Heartland, documents that confirm many details in rHi’s strategy.
Put yourself in Gleick’s shoes. You have one unsourced document, which smells like an early draft of what are real documents, so it all hangs together. Mail it all to friendly publishers. Destroy Heartland. You committed a little impersonation to get the goods but that’s a minor offence compared to the benefit of removing a nuisance from the scene. You’re a whistleblower and the public interest benefits.
Meanwhile, rHi is laughing himself sick.
This was my first clue there would be a concerted effort to move the discussion past the fake document…it’s from desmog
http://www.desmogblog.com/it-s-bird-it-s-hockey-stick-it-s-faked-document
Pertinant point in the article at the end..
“In the meantime, how about everybody take a moment to look away from the shiny penny in the magician’s left hand and concentrate instead on the 100+ pages of damning evidence falling out of his right sleeve.”
I think that was a salvo on behalf of Gleick to get everyone off the fake document. At least that was my read on it.
In the meantime Gleick had not posted anything and tweeted he was at a birthday summit or something…..probably trying to figure out how to get that damn fake document off him. He knows that is the ” oh sh**” moment and he went way way way way way too far.
Everything else is obvious now. I will place bets that within 24 hours we will know he is the author.
SteveF,
Fair enough. Never underestimate the capacity for nominally smart people to do incredibly stupid things.
(And before people jump on my for the nominally smart line, while you might disagree with his politics or views you have to be reasonably intelligent to get a MacArthur).
Punch My Ticket (90919)
as weird as this whole episode has been, you probably need to put a /sarc tag on that.
…otherwise we will have to assume you are Joshua.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but chris y at Revkin’s blog has said it…
“Gleick-gate”.
It will be interesting when Peter Gleick is deposed in the sure yo be filed lawsuit.
Will he then still claim to be unaware of the source of the fake document?
Steve Mc. In the first comment noted that the bottom has not yet been reached in this story. It seems to me that Peter Gleick hasn’t yet stopped digging a deeper hole.
summarized from: Matt B (Comment #90886)
Mosh = DFT
I like that. At least we got something fun out of the whole episode, an updated name for Mosher.
David (90923),
Sorry to disappoint. Not Joshua.
Think about it. If you knew from past interactions that Gleick was a hothead and had a bee in his bonnet about Heartland, then why not lay a trail right into the middle of the swamp? If he doesn’t bite, it cost you a few hours of composition and editing to get it to smell just right plus a buck in postage. But if he does bite …
Would other people, friends, colleagues, spouse step forward to vouch for Gleick’s story of receiving an anonymous letter? If yes, his story gets stronger; if no, it gets weaker.
Plus, if someone did indeed try to expose HI by mailing anonymous letters, wouldn’t s/he send the letter to more than 1 person?
Speaking of DFT, where is he?
Zeke,
Sorry, I was too smug. But in all honesty, there is a huge difference between ‘nominally smart’ and ‘intelligent’. Intelligence in science involves a lot more than ‘smart’… like self awareness, honest humility about your work, and ‘bending over backwards’ to be honest with yourself and others about how your work could be wrong, as Feynman noted. You will spend a lot of time (I suspect) in climate science; I hope you will look for and associate with intelligent people. There are lots of smart people, but very few intelligent ones… in any field. Do your best to ignore the ‘smart’ ones, since they are most of the time a$$holes, and usually wrong to boot.
> Think about it. If you knew from past interactions that Gleick was a hothead and had a bee in his bonnet about Heartland, then why not lay a trail right into the middle of the swamp? If he doesn’t bite, it cost you a few hours of composition and editing to get it to smell just right plus a buck in postage. But if he does bite …
An innocent victim of a scam might at worst have forwarded on the strategy doc.
It’s not nearly so innocent to decide to obtain additional confidential materials using identity fraud and then pass the whole lot on together (including confidential info) – to your supposed friends – without even mentioning that you have doubts about the authenticity of one of the documents.
Punch
You can’t cheat an honest man.
Why would rHI think Gleick would go off the deep end? Would it not be just as likely that he would publish just the memo and say someone sent me this don’t know if it is real but sounds promising. Gleick could have given it to Deep Climate and let him run with it.
Do they mean the disorganized, unreadable, unquotable thing by Mashey which accuses Heartland of doing things like violating the spirit of the tax code? Because the answer to why everyone is ignoring it is that it is unreadable, unquotable and it’s one heck of a lot of work for anyone to figure out whether there is any firm evidence for any of Mashey’s allegations. Maybe if Desmog blog gets someone to do a Mashey-to-human translation and create a nice 5 page summary with bullet points listing the specific allegations or… whatever…and providing the strongest evidence for those allegations then people will discuss it.
I posted here that the memo was clearly the work of Karl Rove. Now it appears the CBS National Guard memo is the comparison. Gleick is essentially saying fake but accurate just like Mary Mapes and Dan Rather. And he is claiming the anonymous receipt of documents just like Bill Burkett claimed he was given the memos at a rodeo by a Mexican woman.
Zeke– I agree with you that Gleick is nominally intelligent. This is rather amazing. I’m trying to figure out if it is odder that he received a document written by someone else unknown and then included it in the packet as he claimed or if he had written it as many had suspected (and I think still suspect.)
(To all: I am going through and trying to find any comment that say we know for sure he wrote it. Gleick says he did not write it but received it from someone else.)
> n the magician’s left hand and concentrate instead on the 100+ pages of damning evidence falling out of his right sleeve.â€
No, I think they’re referring to the Heartland board minutes, budgets, etc., which unlike you (or me), they seem to think are truly horrible.
“However, at no point does he deny being the one who originally wrote it.”
I think on his story he couldn’t have been. If someone faked the strategy doc, they would need access to the knowledge contained in the other docs that he says he obtained later.
> then included it in the packet as he claimed
if that is what happened, why did he not mention in his email to the 15 (?) friends , that 1 document could not be verified? His email implies that all are definitely genuine.
That is an oddity in itself.
Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy than Gleick. If you had any idea how many people this scumbag has put into the poor house single handedly, you would banish all thought about his “honesty” or “virtue” or “morals”.
Hopefully HI will fall on him like Dorthy’s house fell on the Wicked Witch.
For the good of California, and by extension the rest of the country, getting rid of Gleick will do nicely.
Nick Stokes,
I gather you find him credible.
Correct?
Copner (Comment #90939)
“If I understood them correctly, they are saying it is truly horrible that an advocacy organization is advocating opinions that the (Desmogblog) disagree with…”
I read it as them trying to move the discussion away from the most damning document. From the first paragraph they make it obvious that they want that part of the discussion ended. They hide the fear by talking down to anyone who would focus on the most bombastic document…blah blah blah….nothing to see there but over here->>>>> now that’s some stuff huh?
That was my first clue that they needed to move the focus
Found at the AGU:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011EO470009.shtml
Task Force on Scientific Ethics
Chair: Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute, Oakland, California
Copner (Comment #90948)
Oh my OUCH!!
Why would you believe him? Why would anyone believe his cock and bull story? The fact is he knows Heartland has the goods to hang the whole deal around his neck.
This “confession” is just a ham-handed attempt to extricate himself from the noose.
California Penal Code Section 528.5
a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person
who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another
actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other
electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person is guilty of a public offense punishable pursuant to subdivision (d).
(b) For purposes of this section, an impersonation is credible if
another person would reasonably believe, or did reasonably believe, that the defendant was or is the person who was impersonated.
(c) For purposes of this section, “electronic means” shall include
opening an e-mail account or an account or profile on a social
networking Internet Web site in another person’s name.
(d) A violation of subdivision (a) is punishable by a fine not
exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in a
county jail not exceeding one year, or by both that fine and
imprisonment.
(e) In addition to any other civil remedy available, a person who
suffers damage or loss by reason of a violation of subdivision (a)
may bring a civil action against the violator for compensatory
damages and injunctive relief or other equitable relief pursuant to
paragraphs (1), (2), (4), and (5) of subdivision (e) and subdivision
(g) of Section 502.
(f) This section shall not preclude prosecution under any other
law.
Seems pretty clear cut to me but then I’m not a lawyer or prosecutor.
> Oh my OUCH!!
I think that pretty much guarantees this is going to be national, perhaps international, news.
I googled on the phrase. I think you are right.
That’s an interesting rhetorical flourish to end their article, but they may have to make an explicit statement to reveal what the heck they think is damning in those 100+ pages and explain why it’s damning. If they do then people who might comment on DeSmogs interpretation.
Copner (90932) and Jeff Norris (90934),
If you have only the fake, you have to be suspicious of it. It nevertheless would send shivers up your spine. You want it to be true. And you want it out in the open. So you go looking for more evidence.
You can’t publish it alone. It’s arguably defamatory and you’ve got nothing to back it up, no bona fides, no reliable informant, just two sheets in a manila envelope that someone slid under your door.
You can’t print that. Even demsog can’t print that. You have to go looking for more.
So you take a step into an ethical minefield. It is after all in the service of a noble cause. And the payoff would be huge.
A problem for Gleick is that the “authentic” documents confirmed elements of the “fake” document.
So did the author of the fake have access to the authentic information? If so, why not include it in his/her mail to Gleick? But then if he really received it “at the beginning of 2012”, wouldn’t the fake pre-date the production of the authentic documents?
A separate problem for Gleick is that Mosh speculated that Gleick was the author of the fake document, based on the writing style and time zone alone. That’s a pretty big co-incidence!
I’m looking forward to hearing Revkin explain how he was able to establish that the docs were real.
> I’m looking forward to hearing Revkin explain how he was able to establish that the docs were real.
He’s deleted that post hasn’t he?
Lucia,
“I agree with you that Gleick is nominally intelligent”.
I can agree he is nominally ‘smart’ in the Bill Clinton sense (Rhodes Scholar and all that). But really, he is profoundly ‘stoopid’ (your word), not at all intelligent. Intelligence implies a measure of judgement…. and he has none.
I can’t wait for Josh’s next cartoon.
Nick–
I agree with you that in Gleick’s story he did not write the alleged fake-memo. He received the memo in which he was named.
Punch My Ticket,
Reminds me of a good quote from the author Ursula Le Guin: “More often than not, the means are the ends”.
Copner (Comment #90948),
“Task Force on Scientific Ethics
Chair: Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute, Oakland, California”
.
Fox, hen house? Sometimes things turn out for the best…. I rather suspect he will not be chairing such groups in the future.
.
Bill Jamison (Comment #90951)
I hope for his family’s sake Dr. Gleick gets a good lawyer soon; he is going to need one, if only for the civil suit.
Well I am going to look into the fake document again and piece together how the heck the timeline makes sense with the info in that document.
Nick Stokes (Comment #90940),
So NIck, what do you think. Did Dr. Gleick write the fake document or not? I’m thinking a high wager quatloo bet might be appropriate.
“the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debateâ€
i.e. As I apologize for my fraud and dishonesty, I choose to take this opportunity to make another slanderous attack on those who disagree with me.
“Peter Gleick’s owned up, with great regret, to soliciting the documents, after receiving initial documents from an anonymous sender. He specifically states that he altered nothing. A huge lapse of judgement, but I personally think he’s a damned sight more honest than many whom I could mention.” – comment on Deepclimate
“Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him.” – quote in Guardian story http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents?newsfeed=true
“Peter Gleick is standing up for the nobility of science.” – comment on Revkin’s blog
Can we please beatify the guy now please?
Gleick got the email from Heartland with the Heartland documents.
He read them, hoping for something really damaging.
He was disappointed in the Heartland documents.
He wrote the fake memo, using the Heartland documents, but sexing them up and adding a couple of things he really wishes he could prove Heartland was doing (but which were his own fantasies).
He scans his fake memo (on Feb. 13, 2012) to avoid any document properties from the fake memo.
Now he is saying he received the fake memo in the mail.
However, in my opinion this is not a credible assertion.
The facts are much more consistent with Gleick having written the fake memo (in my opinion).
I now feel sorry for Peter Gleick. I sincerely hope he has people around him who can support him through this.
Punch
From what you described the image of Gollum stroking the One Ring came to mind. Hopefully for Dr Gleick unlike Gollum, he was willing to openly share what he found with at least someone .
Copner,
“Can we please beatify the guy now please?”
Lawsuits apply even to saints.
Jeff Norman (Comment #90968),
Yes, and I hope they sing Kumbahah together while holding hands. He deserves to suffer the consequences of his own stupidity.
Wow, they are going to wind up screwing Gleick.
If Guardian et al walked away on this one then Heartland might be willing to reach some out of court settlement. But instead they are giving Heartland motivation to go to court and prove the provenance of the strategy document.
given the available evidence my bet is that the document contains the signature of an Epson printer found in Gleick’s possession.
As Will Rogers said, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
If Gleick committed any crime at all (it’s difficult to tell at this point, but California law looks to be more applicable than what’s on the books under Federal), then he should of course be tried and punished.
It does sound like there is no new evidence supporting the Gleick-as-forger hypothesis to be gained from recent revelations, and that if (IF) Gleick is to be believed, he is not guilty of such a transgression.
I wonder how all of this will shake out. Certainly some visibility has come to Heartland over it all. Whether or not it merely reinforces partisan beliefs (as I would suspect) remains to be seen. Whatever happens, perhaps the role of organizations like Heartland, CATO, Center for American Progress, et al. in shaping politicians’ viewpoints will be given a bit more credence.
thingsbreak,
“Whatever happens, perhaps the role of organizations like Heartland, CATO, Center for American Progress, et al. in shaping politicians’ viewpoints will be given a bit more credence.”
Why? I see no connection.
Bill Jamison (Comment #90951),
Question: Does that violation in the California statutes rate as a misdemeanor or a felony?
thingsbreak (Comment #90975)
February 20th, 2012 at 10:52 pm
“It does sound like there is no new evidence supporting the Gleick-as-forger hypothesis to be gained from recent revelations”
I don’t know about that, this sentence could have been written by the strategy document writer IMO.
“My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”
If the fake memo arrived in early jan, then we know this
1. Whoever faked the memo had access to the documents produced later on Jan 16th.
2. Whoever faked the memo could anticipate the escalation in the war between taylor and Gleick, which ramped up in the week prior
to feb 14.
3. Whoever faked the memo also knew how to imitate Glicks writing style and use the relatively rare terms that he tweets.
So:
A: Gleick is trying to mitigate his exposure for a defamation with malice OR
B: there was a leak/hacker who is a great imitator of bad writing.
#######################
I suppose you all want to know who I fingered as FOIA on day 1?
I’ve left enough hints about him here and there. fish around.
TB
Is it not more likely that the public will be concerned that Scientist are willing to commit fraud in order to promote their beliefs?
Gleick would have learned about “pretexting” in 2006. See the HP case.
1. he gets money from the HP foundation
2. He didnt like carli very much.
Google HP pretexting.
SteveF (Comment #90964)
“So NIck, what do you think. Did Dr. Gleick write the fake document or not?”
I think probably not. I think the account he has given does fit the known facts. He couldn’t write the doc without the Heartland Board papers. And without the doc, it would be a shot in the dark to go after the Board meeting papers. We don’t know if the doc was fake, but I think it was written by someone with prior HI knowledge, not derived from the fraudulently acquired papers.
Nick:
Why couldn’t Gleick have written the doc after he received the Heartland Board papers?
Isn’t the doc consistent with the heartland emailed documents – and therefore could have been written using them as a resource?
I am not sure why you believe “it would be a shot in the dark to after the Board meeting papers”.
From
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents
“In a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on a top Democratic operative and crisis manager, Chris Lehane. Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House is credited for exposing the rightwing forces arrayed against the Democratic president. He was Al Gore’s press secretary during his 2000 run for the White House.”
Looks like he ain’t going down without a fight.
on Glieck being too intelligent.
Glieck isn’t intelligent. He is a genius. That means he thinks he is too smart to get caught. Dumb people fear getting caught. A dumb person would say ” I dont know enough about computers, I might get caught”. A genius, a gold star winning genius on the other hand, thinks he knows everything. Thinks he is too smart to get caught.
The smartest criminals I know are not geniuses.
Early on, somebody wrote me and said that I was wrong, Gleick was too smart. Wrong. Its not about intelligence. Its about his arrogance and anger. Humiliation by Judith Curry and anger at Taylor. He a GENIUS.. how dare they… how dare they not succumb to his genius powers..
Steven Mosher ( Comment #90980)
So with that in mind…..
The timeline does not jive. How can he have info that proves out the fake documents that looks to be archived after his assumption. The PDF file for the HI agenda is Jan16th…and that looks to be created on Joes’s puter. Was the fake document writer foreshadowing?
C’mon…..that is a leap
Ok, going back to coding.
@Jeff Norris:
“Is it not more likely that the public will be concerned that Scientist are willing to commit fraud in order to promote their beliefs?”
No. The likeliest outcome of this, like pretty much everything else, is self-reinforcement. No minds will be changed. The kind of person who is plugged in enough to know about this kind of thing already either thinks Mike Mann is guilty of fraud or thinks those who believe that are either malicious or ignorant fools. Meh.
Although, this may have stirred up enough of a hornet’s nest to have the non-profit status of cut outs/”think tanks” revisited. We’ll see.
@Steven Mosher:
“I suppose you all want to know who I fingered as FOIA on day 1?”
Not particularly- why do you ask?
“Google HP pretexting.”
Why? And by that I mean, why do you think we should care? Not that I don’t care, I just don’t get the motivation for non-WUWTetrs.
RickA (Comment #90986)
I am not sure why you believe “it would be a shot in the dark to after the Board meeting papersâ€.
You’d have to know that there was an upcoming meeting discussing strategy and budget. Of course he might have got a different tip-off to that effect (not the doc as claimed). But I think he had to have something. He could only pull this trick once.
@Don B.
“Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.”
I hear where you’re coming from. It’s pretty clear that someone lying about his/hear identity and gains information in the process is not to be trusted and should be rejected by the skeptic community. Right?
Is that more or less agreeable to everyone else?
Nick:
I see. That makes sense.
I wonder if the strategy and budget meeting is an annual event?
I am sure we will know more in a few days – so I will watch with great interest.
HR (Comment #90987) —
Interesting bury-the-lede by reporter Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian article you linked, Climate scientist Peter Gleick admits he leaked Heartland Institute documents.
The most important news, given by the headline: Scientist Gleick leaked documents.
Second-most important is offered by the summary sentence: “Peter Gleick, a water and climate analyst, says he was blinded by his frustrations with ongoing attacks on climate science.”
Recalling that the key story elements are placed at the top because most readers don’t get all the way through an article, here are Goldenberg’s first four paragraphs.
The notion that some part of this story concerns something that might be a forgery isn’t mentioned until paragraph 8.
Ms. Goldenberg is either quite brazen in her biases, or she hasn’t been paying attention. There doesn’t seem to be a ready third possibility.
Prior to Gleick’s admission, it seemed relevant to me that the person who acquired the board documents by impersonating a director had to know enough about procedures at a 501c3 non-profit to understand how board meetings worked, so that the request for documents was in an appropriate style. Not all commenters at blogs could pull this off.
However, Gleick was president of a 501c3 nonprofit and knew how board meetings worked. He wouldn’t need the fake memo to frame a general request for the board package for the most recent board meeting.
Anyone proffering a third party as author of the fake memo has, as well, to account for the style features and content choices that pointed to Gleick in the first place.
@Steve McIntyre (Comment #90996)
Maybe we can get your input on @Don B’s “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibusâ€?
If Gleick lied about who he was, that justifies throwing out basically everything he says. Agree or disagree?
thingsbreak,
I will agree that anyone who commits identity fraud, steals documents from a privately-funded entity, distributes those stolen private documents, forges an additional defamatory document, and distributes that defamatory document, all while lecturing the the entity he’s defrauding and defaming on ethics does not deserve to be trusted by anyone.
(Note: simpletons may confuse the above activity with that of internal whistleblowers who reveal non-personal, FOIA-able documents from government agencies in order to expose illegal and unethical activity by parties who are being paid billions of taxpayer dollars. Try not to be a simpleton.)
@CTL
Thanks for responding. Your answer was well-beyond what I inquired about. Thanks!
Steven you had this one pinned from the start, I was amazed at the clicking down of your conclusions – definate props. Although somehow in my travels I haven’t seen your hints at FOIA but thats OK, better we don’t know yet.
Your just too much – Steve and Anthony are very lucky to have you on their side, as we all are – damn your good
Your answer was well-beyond what I inquired about. Thanks!
Your inquiry was transparent enough. You’re welcome.
Golberg said inflamed.
smoking gun.
arson.
and folks wonder why the arsonist metaphor came to my mind.
lakoff: metaphors we live by.
Erm….
From Pacfic Institutes 2010 990 tax form
http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/Pacific_Institute_990_tax_10.pdf
Expenses
IT $0
Legal $0
There may be some change to these in 2012
Duke:
Look at what Glieck wrote on jan 12th.
Well now we know where PG was last week… shopping for a new Epson printer/scanner of course.
Lawyer time now. Big $$$$
One wonders whether NCSE’s credibility as an educational advocate is enhanced by the presence of a self confessed fraudster as a board member?
Perhaps we can expect a UCS authored letter, signed by leading educationalists, condemning the involvement of “climate change scientists” in primary education?
Stephen Mosher,
Well played my friend. Bravo! Dick F’n Tracy… I like it.
Nick Stokes,
If the fake memo wasn’t created by Gleick, then we have to account for some rather odd features and coincidences.
First, Mosher fingered Gleick primarily because of the content and style of the fake memo. It’s rather remarkable that these clues led to the correct identification of “Heartland Insider”, even though according to your theory the clues were false.
Second, as Megan Mcardle pointed out in The Atlantic, the fake memo is “… a super-handy roadmap to all the most incendiary portions of the other documents, and it contains absolutely nothing that does not serve that purpose… “. So the fake memo was cobbled together by someone using the same set of documents that Gleick got. That seems an interesting coincidence, but what’s stranger is that the faker didn’t pass these other documents to Gleick. Gleick had to independently get them.
Third, your theory suggests that Gleick is just dishonest enough to obtain documents by deception, but just honest enough to tell the whole truth in his “confession”.
According to the Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg, Heartland hosted “a series of lavish conferences.”
Clearly, Lucia, you need a T-shirt saying “I went to a lavish conference and all I got was a lousy glass of wine.”
Congrats to Mosher for spotting Gleick’s fingerprints all over this, plus all the others here for chipping in to this little detective story.
Poirot who? Never heard of him.
Strangely part of me does feel sorry for Gleick, but then it is important to retain perspective on this. I would hope he would offer *cough* full co-operation in identifying the source of the memo. I don’t think I would want anyone to go to jail over the global warming debate, even for such an extremely unethical act, and I hope that Heartland and Gleick can sort it out between them – perhaps with a suitably huge donation to Heartland’s funds by Gleick and a grovelling apology. That would be fitting. I suspect that could only be achieved by resolving the identity of the faker though. *cough*
That’s just my perspective though. I imagine things look rather different from Heartland’s perspective.
Nick Stokes, Gleick has been asked directly by at least two people, Anthony and Roger Pielke (Jr) if he wrote the fake paper and has refused to either admit or deny it.
Moreover, for a host of good reasons it was the fake paper that identified him. Care to put money on it?
$1000 or 12 months for Identity fraud under California law, can anyone inform what the consequences might be for knowingly disseminating confidential personal information in the full knowledge that it would be published on the internet or even conspiracy to disseminate confidential personal information
Wow! Just wow. I take an evening off from blog patrolling and look what happens.
First, I’d like to commend Mosh again. Brilliant detective work. As this saga continues to unfold, it will be interesting to learn what exactly caused Gleick to fess up now. It seems like it could be one of three reasons.
1. The blogospheric speculation (ignited by Mosh) made it clear that he was going to get busted and he decided it would be better to confess first.
2. The investigation already led to Gleick and he’d been contacted by law enforcement to be interviewed. This seems less likely to me because it’s hard to imagine that the wheels of justice turn quite that fast. Assuming that Gleick didn’t have the docs sent to an email address that was easily traceable, then law enforcement would need to get a judge to compel the ISP (perhaps Gmail) to surrender the data. It just seems a little quick for all that to happen.
3. Gleick had a miraculously spontaneous burst of conscience where (apparently) there was none. Ha! Sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face on that one.
Second and most importantly, I don’t buy the “there I was minding my own business when someone mailed me some docs” story. Not for a minute. As a few others have mentioned, Mosher’s detective work pointed to Gleick as the author of the forgery. Gleick’s confession du jour claims he wasn’t the author. My Venn diagramatic circles of suspicion from the other comment thread pointed in the same direction, supporting Gleick as the author because he had the motives, knowledge, opportunity, biases, worldview, etc.
My last point, already made by James Evans above, is that the sequence of events doesn’t hold. Gleick’s current story means that some other forger (probably on a grassy knoll), created a confidential memo that would reflect exactly the content documents that Heartland would later send to Gleick. I suspect that Gleick’s story is going to quickly fall apart under questioning. In which case he’ll have to choose which he would less like to be, a forger or a perjurer.
Goldenberg’s “piece” in the Guardian just shows how far down the rabbit hole that rag is.
What is coming out now, and it’s scary, is that we are trying to debate science with what is nothing short of a full-blown religious cult.
I do hope that Gleick has kept the printed strategy document.
That may prove which printer printed it and the date it was printed, since many printers these days encode the printer serial number and date in the margins as tiny dots visible only with a microscope.
If he has destroyed it or the document is altered in any way, he is in real big trouble.
If a Print Screen is done of the PDF document and the image is checked with an image processor, it can be seen if there are any folds or creases in the paper. There are no folds or creases in the PDF of the strategy document.
Steven Mosher (Comment #90988)
Bingo! My sentiments, exactly!
Contrary to his plea that it was “frustration” that made him do the dastardly deeds, his self-inflicted wounds can be attributed (with a high level of confidence by IPCC standards) to his very high opinion of himself – along with his very low opinion of those who happen to disagree with him.
This became quite clear to me from his behaviours pursuant to his “review” of The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert [See Odes for Peter Gleick]
Add to this his very vocal and arrogant pit-bull antipathy towards HI and the over-riding lack of humility in his “confession”, such as it was – not to mention the conspicuous absence of any specific details pertaining to his transgressions, compared to the repetition of the ‘truth’ of his claims regarding the evil forces of darkness.
How should one translate “At the beginning of 2012” from Gleick-speak? And when did he do his impersonation act? Surely some dates would have been helpful.
Was his impersonation act conducted via landline, cell or E-mail?
And why did he not disclose the names of the “set of journalists and experts working on climate issues”? How very noble of him to protect his 15 … uh … “fences”, eh?
He certainly succeeded in generating enough MSM coverage that at the AAAS Annual Meeting held in Vancouver – which just happened to end Feb. 20 – the AAAS president was sufficiently “alarmed” to echo and amplify his “concerns”.
Consider the Guardian‘s banner:
Was AAAS president Federoff one of the 15 – or perhaps one of the 15 had “teleconnections” to Federoff?!
YMMV, but I see nothing in any of the above that gives me any reason to believe that Gleick’s carefully crafted “confession” consists of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Looks like he still thinks he’s “too smart to get caught”.
Mind you, I still think Gleick may have had a helping hand from Mashey in pasting together the obviously fake memo with his very own “fingerprints” all over it – regardless of what he may (or may not) have received in the mail “at the beginning of 2012”.
Gleick must be the author of the forged document. No other solution holds water.
If Nick Stokes is right, then we need a HI Insider who knows perfectly PG style. Somebody who think that PG is a genius (a high profile climate scientist).
“hey arsonists often return to the scene of the crime”
SM
PG live in an alternative reality where an insider send a sexy but poorly written memo instead of the officials documents that support it.
Thanks for the fun, now it’s time for the sad part of this story.
Desmogblog channels into the Onion:
http://desmogblog.com/whistleblower-authenticates-heartland-documents
So, while admitting that he impersonated a third party in order to induce Heartland to confirm its own ongoing questionable conduct, Gleick has effectively caught Heartland squarely in the headlights, proving that the Institute has dissembled and lied.
Whistleblowers – and that’s the role Gleick has played in this instance – deserve respect for having the courage to make important truths known to the public at large. Without condoning or promoting an act of dishonesty, it’s fair to say that Gleick took a significant personal risk – and by standing and taking responsibility for his actions, he has shown himself willing to pay the price. For his courage, his honor, and for performing a selfless act of public service, he deserves our gratitude and applause.
Heartland, in the meantime, deserves to be stripped of its charitable status and laughed out of the professional “think tank” fraternity for its amateurishness and the far-less-than-credible position that it has taken in the last week, denying its own responsibility in this “leak,” dissembling about the origin of the material and going out of its way to “fail” to authenticate documents that it knew all along were legitimate.
Somebodies caught in the headlights. That’s for sure.
SteveF,
No, Steve, the guilt by association fallacy is not “reasonable.” Maybe you can see that, maybe you can’t.
Gleick wrote the fake. Why is anyone on this thread doubting it? Steven Mosher and others even identified him from the style, grammer and use of his stock phrases.
Mark said:
2. The investigation already led to Gleick and he’d been contacted by law enforcement to be interviewed. This seems less likely to me because it’s hard to imagine that the wheels of justice turn quite that fast. Assuming that Gleick didn’t have the docs sent to an email address that was easily traceable, then law enforcement would need to get a judge to compel the ISP (perhaps Gmail) to surrender the data. It just seems a little quick for all that to happen.
I’ll say. Consider that this is a State of California “crime”, to be investigated at the discretion of the Attorney General of California Kamala Harris. I’ll be surprised if it ever sees a courtroom.
How does the 990 document fit into this. HI would not have emailed it to him, it was publicly available. Why include it with the documents that where sent to the original 15? Gleick’s statement seems to have been crafted to hide more than it reveals.
How about theoretically intelligent, empirically stupid.
“I did not have textual relations with that memo!”
IF Gleick had received the “unconfirmed” anonymous strategy memo that he wanted to verify, he would clearly not have asked for the last board meeting documents that were never referred to in the strategy paper. To verify the accuracy of the document, as a fake board member, he would have naturally asked the secretary the strategy document itself!
And yes, looking at Gleick’s behavior he is a true believing activist but quite clearly not an intelligent person. Just looking at the text of the strategy document and the childish “Great to be away with family…” alone. These are clearly the doings of an utterly silly person.
The remarks about Revkin and Curry being ‘turnable’ were only in Gleicks fake memo, weren’t they? In the interests of gossip only, what does Gleick have against them? 😉
Dr Tamsin Edwards (@flimsin)and I had a run in with Peter very recently (2 weeks ago), His emails to her and me were very enlightening.
His attitude to me is bizarre, as he also forwarded to me, their previous conversations where he made things very clear.
In Tamsin’s closing email to Peter Gleick ( that I am party to)
“I would personally be infuriated if I was dismissed on account of the behaviour of a group of people I talk with. Every single person I talk with has a different viewpoint, and I learn a lot about how better to communicate climate science by listening to them. If we dismiss swathes of people by association then our attempts at communication become futile: we end up only ‘preaching to the converted from an ‘ivory tower’, as it wereâ€.
Of course, if communication of climate science is not your aim, then it is your choice if you prefer to communicate with nobody! – Tamsin Edwards
Peter had accused me of being ‘incredibly offensive on twitter (ie i thought my followers would mean like the vile abuse Katie Hayhoe had received (@KHayhoe –i s one of my twitter followers).’
And it TOOK THREE climate scientists, Dr Tamsin Edwards, Prof Richard Betts (met Office, IPCC), AND Prof Katie Hayhoe herself to get him to back down.. and to publically apologise.
in the email exchanges (published with permission) that followed Peter Gleicks thoughts about me, his worldview to ‘sceptics’ and his attitude to Dr Tamsin Edwards are very enlightening.
http://www.realclimategate.org/2012/02/clarifications-and-how-better-to-communicate-science/
What started this is Peter took issue with Dr Edwards blog name, where he pulled the senior scientist card (rather assertively, because some sceptics liked it (me) and it should be said UK climate scientists liked it as well!
http://allmodelsarewrong.com/all-blog-names-are-wrong/
This made me wonder, a bit, just after Heartland.. (not directly connected, but I thought he was being twitchy or ‘boasting’ ?)
@BarryJWoods @icey_mark @flimsin gee, what have I done now?—
Peter Gleick (@PeterGleick) February 15, 2012
DeSmogBlog’s Richard Littlemore’s post from last night (late on 2/20/12) is worth a scan, as are the comments. The title, Whistleblower Authenticates Heartland Documents perfectly conveys DeSmog’s position.
The concrete has set; positions have hardened. With us or against us? Or, for the historically-minded, J’accuse!
DF Tracy (Comment #90980) – born in 1952 and joined CRU in 1977?
DFT – BK turnaround?
Assume for a moment that Gleick received the strategy document from an anonymous source, as he claims.
Now that strategy document actually contains text along the lines “here’s some super stuff we’ll keep secret even from our own board”.
If Gleick wanted to verify the strategy doc, the last thing he would want to look at would be he board papers, because the strategy doc supposedly contains info that even the Heartland board don’t know.
So why would he then go do ID theft, or whatever you want to call it, to get the board papers?
It doesn’t make sense… he stole completely the wrong papers to test the authenticity of the strategy document.
Well, Mosher was right. Heartland owes you quite a bit for that great detective insight and unraveling this in such a short period of time.
It just seems improbable that someone with so much to lose would take a risk like this but there you go.
Wouldn’t the Strategy Document be emailed out along with the other Board documents. So, unless Gleick used the name of a Board member who was not “in” enough to receive the Strategy document (it says it will only be distributed to a select group), then Gleick should have known it was fake. It seems he would have chosen to impersonate someone who was “in” enough to get the document. Therefore, …
Gleick’s research, awards and board appointments should be withdrawn now.
Boris 91025,
No fallacy involved in people noting that extreme political advocates are less likely to be completely honest than most. The same logic generally applies to, say, convicted criminals and politicians. I truly wonder if you don’t think people note those things. You may want to read Jaynes on Bayesian reasoning.
J Storrs Hall (Comment #91030)
LOL.
PG: The dog ate the HI strategy memo before it ate the other documents.
As predicted, Greg Laden accepts Gleick’s statement as true, and uses that to claim the strategy memo must be real
Like I said if Gleick does know anything more about the strategy memo that he hasn’t disclosed (including if knows it’s fake), he just threw one of his supporters under a bus.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/02/the_heartland_science_denial_d.php
Gleick are you reading? Does this aspect at all pick your his conscience?
In my syntax comparison between the Gleick strategy letter and Gleick’s writings, I noted the use of the word “subset.” This is a very specific word that comes from academia. Turns out that Gleick makes abundant use of the word “subset” in his writings, I googled around and found lots of examples.
Copner–
There is nothing in Gleick’s story to suggest the memo is real. If Gleick’s story is clue Gleick isn’t the author, but that doesn’t mean the memo is real. Gleick says he got it from an anonymous source. If the source was anonymous at the time and has not revealed themselves to Gleick or anyone else, Gleick has no idea who wrote it. In light of Heartland’s direct statement that the document is fake ought to see Gleick and Laden have no reason to expect it to be a document that originated at Heartland.
> There is nothing in Gleick’s story to suggest the memo is real.
Actually, I would say there is.
Because if the strategy memo was truly obtained prior to the board documents, and acquired independently from a different source, the commonalities would suggest that somebody other than Gleick, but with access to Heartland’s private information, wrote it.
So Laden says the memo which lead Mosher et al to finger Gleick as it’s author is real.
The only logical conclusion is that Gleick works for Heartland (or that Laden is a fool).
On the subject of the strategy memo:
1. It builds up Gleick as a good climate scientist and an important Forbes commentator to be reckoned with.
2. It’s claim that Heartland want to discourage teaching of science [i.e. AGW] in schools, is in stark contrast to Gleick’s new position with NCSE encouraging teaching science [i.e. AGW] in schools.
I’m not saying he wrote the memo, but that’s 2 personal motives (as well as more nebulous political motives) that Gleick would have had to fake it.
Gleick never says he didn’t write it himself, he merely claims that it was delivered to him in the mail and was unsigned (anonymous). If you’re trying to create faux authenticity, having a mailed letter with post-dated envelope delivered to your house would be one way of achieving that.
As pointed out above, the idea that somebody would send a crappily written memo and not include the supporting documents that substantiate it strains credibility.
Given the timestamps of the documents, isn’t it much more plausible that the fake memo was written after the other documents were fraudulently obtained? Are the AGW activists claiming the memo had to have been written first because it allows them to grasp at the straw that the memo may not actually be fake?
Lucia or anyone else
Do you know how many of the “Dear Friends (15 of you):†have come forward and acknowledged receipt of Dr. Gleicks email?
Admittedly they should be cautious of being drawn into this controversy but the very likely hood of legal matters not to mention the general tenacity of skeptics would suggest that many of them get out in front of this. A constant drip drip of information will do their cause and reputation little good.
> Are the AGW activists claiming the memo had to have been written first because it allows them to grasp at the straw that the memo may not actually be fake?
Yes!
wait, so how did steve surmise this???
Carrick,
“Given the timestamps of the documents, isn’t it much more plausible that the fake memo was written after the other documents were fraudulently obtained?”
As a certain formerly famous politician likes to say “You betcha!”
Hard to see how/why HI would combine exact copies of some portions of the real documents with other sections that read like a hysterical blog post from Gleick, including his odd punctuation style, sentences structure, and favorite attack phrases. And why on Earth would anybody at HI bother pointing out how important and famous Gleick is as a climate scientist, and name the blog where he posts much of his rubbish. Absolutely not credible.
I found the Revkin article just minutes after it was posted and alerted readers here and at other blogs. I also posted to Dot Earth in those first few minutes, but as in the past on Dot Earth, my post (now 14 hours later) does not appear. Thus the following cross post to Dot Earth-
How ironic that a NYT blogger states, “The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the ‘rational public debate’ that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.” The NYT itself has prevented rational public debate. How quick the NYT was to print the Glleik slander after refusing to print the so-called climategate emails they claimed (with still no evidence) were stolen. Andrew Revkin presents as fair a picture of the debate as he probaly can with the NYT connection. I am a conservationist, environmental educator and was a life-long reader of the NYT. The Sunday Times was a highlight of our week, especially the crossward puzzle for some- we often bought two Sunday NYTs!- and the Review of Books for me. No longer. The NYT is part of the reason we don’t have a rational debate. Because of the Gore-Hansen-Gliek extremeism and NYT unbalanced reporting we have done far more damage to conservation, to science, to social justice- areas that Revkin and I care about- than global warming seems ever likely to do. With the food for fuel program we have increased basic food prices worldwide resulting in untold starvation and suffering; the clear cutting of tropical forests for palm oil has been a conservation disaster. How many have died and suffered because of global warming? The NYT seems to censure my posts so I’m cross posting elsewhere to show the NYT’s duplicity.
The most amazing fact about this episode is the speed with which the blogosphere nailed Gleick. When the information available was assembled and then assessed, Gleick was one of the few people who might have been the propagator.
He is completely wrong to try to maintain he did not write the fake, though. That will be the next shoe to drop, I believe.
Lucia
Failed to read the “ Anyone know?†post carefully. You too think the identities of the Dear Friends is of interest.
Doug Allen,
No comments from either side have been posted at Dot Earth (which itself is rather odd). I don’t think your views specifically are being singled out.
Glieck has set himself for an embarrassing fall in service to the myth that a giant right-wing conspiracy with vast resources is all that stands between imminent planetary death versus enlightened salvation.
In fact, the entire Heartland annual budget could be a rounding error for the Sierra club alone much less the rest of Big Green. And that does not include the government funds channeled to warmist activism.
Maybe it isn’t Big Oil so much as elitist, self-righteous pomposity of the leading voices of warmist alarmism combined with undisguised contempt for everyone outside their barely-off-campus cultural niche that fueled an opposition that did not require a massive corporate conspiracy to implement.
The pathetic continuing need for some to find a link between Steve McIntyre and Big Oil is symptomatic of the need for a conspiracy to explain why anybody would notice the incompleteness of the Warmist Vision and not otherwise fall in line.
Romm, Pachauri, Mann, Hansen, Gore,… A collective demand for no accountability and unquestioned political obedience on the basis of a demonstrably overstated case… Easy to see why Gleick came to believe he was untouchable, one of the anointed. Sad. Pointless.
Anybody see any irony in the conclusion to Revkin’s commentary:
When was Peter Gleick ever really interested in acknowledging ANY climate related issue that was worthy of actual debate rather than acquiescence to The Consensus? Isn’t it alarmist dogma that the time for debate is over? The pathetic attack on Heartland is clear evidence of a rather different approach to issue resolution than debate.
I may have missed it but what was Gleick’s reason for confessing?
Lucia; NickStokes: Strange, isn’t it, that the only documents mentioned in the faked memo just happen to be items that Gleick passed on to support it – he had a 100% hit rate in his request for the board documents? That no straight-fact documents are missing? You must see that Occam’s Razor indicates that the fake was produced by exerpting the HI items.
> I may have missed it but what was Gleick’s reason for confessing?
To ensure open and factual debate about climate change. I kid you not.
“Given the need for reliance on facts in the public climate debate, I am issuing the following statement.”
Copner
It sound nobler than “Because everyone is pointing the finger at me and bandying my name around, with some asking me very direct questions, I am issuing the following statement.”
Yes, splendidly done Steven Mosher.
The provenance of the fake can be easily determined if California law supports the English legal practice of discovery, whereby the parties to a dispute can demand all relevant materials from each other in advance of the preliminary court hearing.
Thus, if Heartland files suit against Gliek, it can demand his email and snail mail records for the relevant period, specifically a) the ‘anonymous’ package, b) his request to Heartland, c) their reply, and d) What he sent to to DeSmog. Together these will show when and (probably) from whence the fake memo materialized.
If he did create the fake, he’ll have deleted some material, but that should be detectable with Court mandated forensics. Unless he’s very smart, that is. However given his actions, the latter seems not to be the case.
I bet that the real reason Gleick made the partial confession is that he realized he is completely dead-to-rights on the basis of who might have obtained the documents fraudulently. I bet he talked to someone who knows that the deleted EMail account can and will be resurrected for court purposes. He is now hoping that he can not be tied to production of the fake directly, hence the “anonymous snailmail”. However, he does not understand that he was tied to the fake document initially on the basis of style and content, and that there are vanishingly few people who would have written any such “memo” such as that… indeed there seems to be only one: Gleick himself.
I wonder who he is trying to convince right now to lie about his having received a memo he mentioned to them a month ago, that he was working hard to verify. Does he have someone who is willing to go to jail along with him? I Submit that if such was the Truth, that person would have emerged already. If such a person emerges now, I will not believe such a story unless it has a whole lot of evidence backing it up.
George Tobin (Comment #91088),
I think the issue for Revkin (and of course, Gleick and others) is they believe that if they could silence/discredit anyone who raises doubts about the magnitude and consequences of future warming, then they could move to the discussion they really want to have: immediate and drastic reduction in fossil fuel use, “environmental justice” (AKA wealth redistribution from developed countries to poor ones), forced drastic decline in the material standard of living in developed countries (AKA “sustainable development”), hugely increased public control over all private activities, reduced global population, etc, etc. And they want that public discussion only under the unchallenged assumption of certain future doom if each drastic measure is not adopted. Without the unchallenged assumption of future doom, they will never win the public debate, and they know it.
.
So long as people continue to raise questions about the certainty of future thermal doom, and continue to note the political motives and plainly unscrupulous behavior of many involved in climate science (and Dr. Gleick is a perfect example), it is impossible to have the “public debate” they claim they want under circumstances where they can win that debate. It is politics masquerading as science, nothing more.
Timeline of the confession — Speculation
It occurs to me that maybe the trigger to Gleick’s confession was the American Spectator article by Ross Kaminsky
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/17/theft-and-apparent-forgery-of
That article fingered him for document theft “One obvious suspect in the Heartland document theft — and this is just my speculation — is Peter Gleick,” – and while it says the strategy memo is fake, never actually accuses Gleick of being the faker (it simply says his office is in the same timezone as the faker).
And maybe Gleick was not aware of Mosher’s speculation and all the speculation about the content of the faked document that was going on at Lucia’s.
Then Roger Jr. tweets him asking if he is the document faker.
At which point maybe he decides the game is up regarding the theft, but thinks he need not confess to any knowledge of the fakery (if he any such knowledge), because all the evidence against him is the fake was made in his office’s time zone.
So then he talks to his close associates, and starts preparing his confession (the confessions looks like he’s had some advice preparing it, and is very carefully written).
But he’s now stuck in a trap, since if he does have any knowledge of the fakery, he can’t disclose it even to his close associates, because he’d then have to admit that he had lied to them even while confessing to the document theft…
Zeke said-
Doug Allen,
No comments from either side have been posted at Dot Earth (which itself is rather odd). I don’t think your views specifically are being singled out.
Funny, I saw 4 comments posted when I wrote this at 9:13 AM and there are 9 comments now. I don’t think my views are specifically being singled out. I suspect dozens or perhaps even hundreds of posts are not being printed. My original post was over 16 hours ago. I am now cross posting to try and shame the NYT in allowing critical posts. I suggest everyone here post to Dot Earth. I imagine there’s a conference at NYT trying to decide how they should precede. I hope they don’t can Andy Revkin, but his voice is also absent today. Here’s a recent crosspost from a few hours ago to NYT and Climate, Etc.-
Integrity of the news media also needs to be addressed!
I found the Revkin article just minutes after it was posted and alerted readers here and at other blogs. I also posted to Dot Earth in those first few minutes, but as in the past on Dot Earth, my post (now 14 hours later) does not appear. Thus the following cross post to Dot Earth-
How ironic that a NYT blogger states, “The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the ‘rational public debate’ that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.†The NYT itself has prevented rational public debate. How quick the NYT was to print the Glleik slander after refusing to print the so-called climategate emails they claimed (with still no evidence) were stolen. Andrew Revkin presents as fair a picture of the debate as he probaly can with the NYT connection. I am a conservationist, environmental educator and was a life-long reader of the NYT. The Sunday Times was a highlight of our week, especially the crossward puzzle for some- we often bought two Sunday NYTs!- and the Review of Books for me. No longer. The NYT is part of the reason we don’t have a rational debate. Because of the Gore-Hansen-Gliek extremeism and NYT unbalanced reporting we have done far more damage to conservation, to science, to social justice- areas that Revkin and I care about- than global warming seems ever likely to do. With the food for fuel program we have increased basic food prices worldwide resulting in untold starvation and suffering; the clear cutting of tropical forests for palm oil has been a conservation disaster. How many have died and suffered because of global warming? The NYT seems to censure my posts, so I’m cross posting elsewhere to show the NYT’s duplicity.
AFPhys (#91096) —
I’m with you on that speculation — Gleick (or more likely his attorney) realized that there were digital tracks that would lead back to him as the one who obtained & released the Heartland docs.
But it’s not about convincing anybody. desmog & such are convinced that the fake strategy document is real, but in fact even if Gleick admitted writing it, that wouldn’t change their minds about evil Heartland. Most others (I think) believe that it’s fake, and their perspective on Heartland wouldn’t depend upon whether it was Gleick or his anonymous mailer who faked it.
What it’s really about is liability. Here’s the storyline which Gleick (or his lawyer) is presenting: Strategy document arrives in the mail. Gleick tries to confirm using legitimate methods, but fails. Then he tries the pretexting and succeeds, obtaining bona fide Heartland documents. Gleick’s confirmed several facts in the strategy document. Now when he distributes the defamatory material, he is not being reckless — he’s done due diligence to establish that the material is likely true. This would seem to shield him from a charge of libel, or at least mitigate it severely. [I am not a lawyer, although I’ve watched lots of Perry Mason shows. And read the books too.]
What would disprove this storyline? Well, perhaps the initial hardcopy document. It’s always possible this was discarded after scanning, though. Or if a document is provided, how can he prove (or someone else disprove) that it is the same one which arrived in his mail, as opposed to a later printout?
What we have is a somewhat plausible line which shields Gleick from damages due to defamation. Sure, he’s confessed to pretexting. But I think that’s a criminal offense. Given that it’s a first offense, he did not use the information for financial advantage, he was led into it due to frustration &c, I could well imagine something like a suspended sentence with a caveat to stay away from the climate wars. Or some small slap on the wrist. What would hurt is getting tagged with significant damages in a civil suit, and it seems that we can see the position being taken in advance of that.
Given that there is precedent (Rathergate) I propose that the new tern for this be “Glieckgate”. He deserves to go down in history for his actions.
Copner (Comment #91098),
I suspect the confession statement was based on discussions with his lawyer(s). Since these conversations are privileged, he can safely tell them the truth; it could have been something like: “I got HI to send me some documents by email by impersonating one of their directors, and I wrote this fake strategy document (hands the pages to the lawyer) based on the real documents. But at the time, I didn’t think there was any way I could be found out. Since people are already saying it was me, and with a court order HI can probably trace my email, how can I minimize my legal liability?”
I suggest we all write to the NYT at Dot Earth so he doesn’t bring Andrew Revkin down with him.
No need for the authorities to get involved. We’ve been through this before.
I propose 3 blue ribbon panels to investigate Dr. Gleick, his (501)3c enterprise, and the science supporting his efforts.
I would think that the tragedy that Gleick clearly exposes in his recent actions are how extreme advocacy can affect how an otherwise intelligent scientist might act. Gleick I am sure is convinced that AGW presents very real catastrophic consequences for the mankind’s future and/or that the precautionary principle should be applied here because any detrimental results coming from attempts at mitigation well be benign. And I would judge that that thinking derives more from his political/advocacy positions then his area of scientific expertise which encompasses only a small portion of the total picture of AGW and its potential future effects – both beneficial and detrimental.
I would guess that Gleick is so certain of the correctness of his position in his mind that he had decided that the ends justify the means. He must have seen organizations opposed to views on AGW as evil. What is revealing to me is that, even in an apparent moment of angst for Gleick in his confession, he is still able to keep alive the idea that the supposedly fake memo is legitimate and, in my view anyway, that Gleick must also realize that the memo is very much required to spin the valid documents in a bad light for HI and by extrapolation any other organizations that might oppose Gleick’s veiws for immediate actions on AGW. If the supposedly fake document can be shown conclusively as faked (by whoever and including Gleick) the whole blog spin on the valid documents goes down the drain for all except the most believing of the true believers.
HaroldW: any statement such as “I tossed the original fake memo in the trash” is totally useless in a court, whether in front of a judge alone or a jury. Evidence is needed, and any such testimony is 100% dependent on the credence of the witness. By his actions in this, Gleick’s reliability as a truthful witness is clearly not very high.
I believe there is a high likelihood that Gleick will have major liability (civil). I further believe his best chance of avoiding a jail term is to confess he wrote the fake, and to ask for mercy from the judge so he can earn money to pay the civil damages. I foresee a “legal defense fund for Gleick” coming up soon. Sure would be great to see who donated to it.
HaroldW (91102),
“Oh, I threw it out after I scanned it” won’t cut it. I expect Heartland to file suit and immediately apply to a judge for an order to preserve the original paperwork and any computer to which Gleick had access so that a forensic examination can be conducted.
The original piece of paper and the envelope it arrived in had better exist. All his computers had better be clean but not too clean. Otherwise Gleick doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Nick Stokes further diminishes his reputation with a reflexive defense of the indefensible. I used to think that guy was intelligent and honest.
@ SteveF (Comment #91105)
> I suspect the confession statement was based on discussions with his lawyer(s). Since these conversations are privileged
Any conversations with his lawyer is, and no doubt the lawyer had a hand in the confession.
But you’re assuming his first conversation was with a lawyer.
I am not sure it would have been. At the beginning of it, he may have thought of it as PR problem, since (a) the PR battle on Forbes looks like it might have been part of the trigger than pushed him to this, and (b) he first became aware he was suspected of involvement not by a legal document being served or anything like that – but by articles in American spectator, blogs, and a tweet from Roger Jr.
So maybe his first conversation was with a friend. Or with Revkin. Or with his PR guy, Those wouldn’t be privileged.
Copner (Comment #91122),
I hope you’re right. IMO, the threat of jail time for perjury is about the only thing that might lead to honest statements from those involved.
“Lucia; NickStokes: Strange, isn’t it, that the only documents mentioned in the faked memo just happen to be items that Gleick passed on to support it – he had a 100% hit rate in his request for the board documents? That no straight-fact documents are missing? You must see that Occam’s Razor indicates that the fake was produced by exerpting the HI items.”
I think it is almost at this point: Either Gleick is lying or HI is and at this point who would you believe about the supposedly faked document.
Apologies if I’m not up to speed… does anyone know if Gleick actually answered Roger Pielke’s question about the forgery?
If he didn’t, isn’t that about the third opportunity that he’s had to deny it, all of which he’s turned down? One time at least while giving the impression that he is, indeed, denying it?
Sooner or later this is surely going to get extremely messy..
As I wrote earlier: Occam’s Razor demands the conclusion that Gleick wrote the fake.
Gleick managed to get exactly the documents that are cut/pasted in the fake when going on his phishing expedition to the board? Right…
Gleick did not fail to get some document mentioned in the fake that would have been great to have? Right…
Gleick got it snailmail? Right, who believes that? Does he that widely advertise his address?
It is totally un-credible that Gleick’s writing style is used in the memo, and that when he goes on his quest for verification, he manages to get those documents and only those documents needed to produce it. It is un-credible that the fake happens by chance to tout Gleick’s stellar reputation, website, and his current quest of propagandizing in schools. It is un-credible that he kept it held tightly to his chest, telling no one, instead of disseminating it to others to ask for their help in verifying it. It is un-credible that it arrived by snail-mail and that the dissemination document to the 15 does not mention that the documents from HI were obtained to support the faked memo. These and too many other things are un-credible.
As others above note, he sees himself as a genius who can not be touched by this. This is the work of a gigantic ego, nothing more or less; an ego that has allowed him to stray into criminal behavior. He is lucky that his criminal liability appears to be measurable in low numbers thus far, but if he gets into perjury that low number can rapidly become high.
I am reminded of well known quotations like “the best lie is 90% truth”. Gleick created a lie he hoped would be credible by mixing 10% false incendiary material with 90% truth supported by the documents he had obtained fraudulently. I am reminded also of “the father of lies” but won’t go there at this time.
It will be determined in court, or Gleick will confess earlier, that he wrote the fake.
Anteros: I have not been many places about this, but thus far I have seen no suggestion any where that Gleick has directly answered Pielke’s questions.
Cross post
Gleick may very well be looking at a perjury charge. He was “mailed†that document right?
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1. There were no fold marks on the “scanned†copy. While it is possible that someone used an 8 1/2 x 11 enevlope, who would do that for a 2 page document?
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2. Whoever faked the document, had to have access to the Board meeting papers, as some of the exact wording was on both.
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Which would mean someone saw the board papers, then faked the document, then sent Gleick the fake, but not the board meeting papers!
Some things about Gleick’s story seem improbable. Others are so vague they could be consistent with a wide range of fact yet to be revealed. But not everything you mention contributes smoke to the gun.
I’m sure Gleick gets snailmail at multiple addresses– work and home. I’m sure it’s easy to locate at least one.
One puzzle is why would a sender choose snail-mail? Also, did he send a paper document? Or did he send something on a CD or other electronic media? Also, if a sender chose snail-mail, why wouldn’t Gleick try to find out why one would chose snail-mail and if there is a good reason to do so, use it himself?
Of course.
Les
He wrote
Doesn’t say it was a paper copy. Could be some other medium. DVD. Thumb drive. Ancient floppy disk.
True enough. His mea culpa is deliberately vague. Sending electronic data via snail mail is ludicrous, but possible.
That still does not explain why his Deep Throat did not send all the documents, as its fairly certain that to write the fake, they had to have access to the board papers.
I agree, Lucia, that getting his snailmail address is probably not impossible, but let me take a definite personal example: If I wanted to send you something dicey, I would not even try to find your snailmail address and send it there in the blind. Suppose someone else opened it? I would approach you by EMail first to be sure that was a place you would get my communication directly and with certainty. ONLY if your snailmail was widely and simply available would I rely on snailmail to some published address. However, that is only one circle in the Venn diagram, as it has been characterized, not the only circle. I tried to remove its prominence by putting it down a bit in the list.
AFPhys-
I don’t know. My husband and I don’t open each other’s mail …. Let me revise: I never open his if it looks remotely personal and as far as I know he never opens mine if it looks remotely personal. If it looked like it was from the Humane Society or something I might open it if it were addressed to him and he might if it were addressed to me…. I think… I’m actually fuzzy on this.
But honestly, if I didn’t know the sender, I’d have to really think hard to decide whether sending something by snail mail is more likely to remain private that sending by email. Sending a cd with a very brief cover letter to a snail mail address might be less traceable that many other methods. This could be especially true if after you learned some printers leave traces, you trimmed off the edges of whatever it is you have to trim to take them off.
1. There were no fold marks on the “scanned†copy
There is more then one way to scan a document.
One is to used a ‘copy scan’. Basicallt the image becomes a ‘photocopy’.
Another is an ‘Optical Character Recognition Scan’.
The optical character recognition scan only picks up characters…no fold marks…water marks..etc etc….it also explains some of the misspellings…I.E. flinders rather then funders.
The epson scanner ‘features’
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&sku=B11B206201#key-features
Create editable text and searchable PDFs — OCR and document management suite included for PDF and PDF/A file
Don,
“Nick Stokes further diminishes his reputation with a reflexive defense of the indefensible. I used to think that guy was intelligent and honest.”
Thank you for your frequent tributes to my honesty. But what “indefensible” am I defending? Where?
There is some thing else that makes no sense in the half-confession. Taken at his word, if PG had received a document that embarrasses or incriminates the Heartland Institute from an anonymous source inside the HI, his effort to verify it, even if he is not identified as the phisher, incriminates the document. The non-criminal leaked or whistle blown revelatory document about the HI, from an insider at the HI, is now attached to a crime. His excuse makes no sense.
Way up the thread some one speculated about PG taking legal action against the people accusing him of forgery. I hope he does do that. The names Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers have unfortunately fallen out of the lexicon.
Just a thought about ‘character’ and zealotry and noble cause corruption… how many climate scientists would have written a coruscating review of a book they hadn’t even read? I don’t think it’s the biggest offence in the world, but how many people would actually do it? Hansen? Schmidt? Trenberth? Not a chance
The talk of some people being advocates rather than scientists doesn’t describe the half of it. It’s a holy war! 🙂
Is Gleick married? I wonder what his wife thinks of all this. Both for him and the Desmoggers, I can’t help thinking that HI would prefer to avoid the bad publicity attendant on suing (and bankrupting) these guys, so would prefer a proper confession and apology.
If I were married to one of these chaps and he were considering martyring himself financially ‘for the cause’, I might point out that his family will suffer and suggest he needs to apologise profusely and hope he can avoid losing the family home and going to prison.
Dave–
Wikipedia write
No wife listed.
For those who think Gleick’s conversations with his attorneys are privileged, not so fast. The crime-fraud exception would negate privilege, at least in the context of the conversation one poster hypothesized. (“I committed this fraud, now help me minimize my liability.”)
As for the numerous theories I’ve hear about how he better still have the original, again I wouldn’t get too enthused. Courts are VERY concerned about ordering someone to do the impossible. So even if it stinks to high-heaven, if he says the document was lost or destroyed before his confession (before fear of suit), and sticks to his gun, the odds of any formal sanction are low. Most likely, the jury will just be given the chance to draw whatever conclusions they want from the absence of that document.
I really think we ought to give him the honorific he deserves, rather than call him Gleick or Peter Gleick. I think we need to think about referring to him as Saint Peter from now on, since his beatification by greens is now complete.
Example – comment posted at Desmogblog
Those who deny that Peter Gleick is anything less than a courageous hero dedicated to revealing the truth in near total disregard for his own safety must be well-practiced in the dark arts of denial. As a veteran of the climate wars who has shown remarkable bravery, responsibility and humility, he deserves a medal. His place among the Great and the Good in the history of the climate wars is assured.
Gleick is married. Not much point in bringing her into the mix.
Anteros, in answer to your question above, Hansen would. It’s no different from civil disobedience he in gauges in and his getting arrested at protest demonstrations.
Schmidt is a good guy, I think. As is Trenberth, and the rest of the real scientists. You are correct that they wouldn’t do things like that. They are strongly opinionated, almost “zealots” in their scientific opinions. But I think that they are civic minded in the ordinary or normal way.
I think you are in Britain, so you may not know about Berkeley, the city and school. (Oakland city is the adjoining city to Berkeley, and PG is a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley). PG’s actions and civic sense are a requirement to be a good citizen of the city and of the school.
As for why Gleick might have tried to avoid liability for defamation, despite the general concensus around here that the evidence we already have shows that more likely than not he’s the forger, I did a little checking on what kind of award HI might be looking at.
For libel per se (which includes libel having to do with one’s profession, which includes this case) there is no need to prove actual damages; they are presumed. And if there are any actual damages, the court can award punitive damages. The median punitive damages award in the early 90s was $2.5 million, according to one law review article I read.
@QBeamus, I asked it earlier, but nobody had a clear opinion.
Are there are other causes of action that Heartland might sue Gleick for – either relating to the supposedly authentic (but private) documents, and/or relating to the fake documents.
Regarding any authentic documents – I would thought it must be a civil tort of some sort to acquire private and proprietary documents by improper means, and then publish them.
Regarding the collection as a whole, it would seem to me that Heartland might say that they were used to try to interfere with their lawful rights – for example, by interfering with the fund-raising activities, by interfering with their contracts with donors and various scientists. etc.
Do you have any opinion on this?
QBeamus (Comment #91164)
“The crime-fraud exception would negate privilege, at least in the context of the conversation one poster hypothesized. (“I committed this fraud, now help me minimize my liability.â€) ”
.
Sure. No lawyer would EVER help a client avoid liability for fraud. I can almost here the exchange between them… “before you tell me your story, be aware that if you committed a fraud, I will turn you in…”. Even if he said that, and it seems implausible, Gleick would adjust his story to make it possible for his lawyer to give valuable advice on how to… well, avoid liability for fraud.
Copner,
I wouldn’t dream of claiming to be able to identify every potential cause of action. I’m an intellectual property attorney, so the scope of my knowledge is limited, and that question calls for breadth of knowledge, not depth. (I know about libel law partly because it’s on the edge of IP, but mostly just because I had a fabulous prof in law school.)
With that caveat, with my IP bias, my favorite is trade secret.
harrywr2 (Comment #91151)
Unlikely it was a OCR scan. There are marks on the paper on page and and 2, and the letters have charecteristic “missing pixel” look of a scan. An OCR would be sharp and clean, albeit with misspellings.
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/2012%20Climate%20Strategy.pdf
Plus, I could find no spelling error, machine or human, in that document.
I expect this will also have a pretty devastating impact on the Pacific Institute. Saint Peter is the president and co-founder. These places run on donations and grants. Getting those is hard in the best of times. People tend to shy away from supporting anything tied up in scandal and he’s the poster boy/rainmaker. It’s not like the board can just fire him, it seems he’s been inextricably linked to it for 25 years. Looking at their website it appears there are approximately 20 staffers there. This is probably going to be unfortunate for them which is sad.
QBeamus (Comment #91175),
My son is finishing his law studies in IP in a little over a year. IP doesn’t to me seem all that connected to white collar crime like fraud.
Mr Tobis over at init.planet3.org – is it an homage to Gleickich parenthesis; or water on the brain?
I do despair of this planet when we humans seem so enamoured by taking sides and throwing shit over the fence at each other. Am beginning to think Darwin got it Wrong and humans are the bottom of the heap, maybe with cats at the top, or in fact, any animal other than us.
To SteveF @ Comment 91105:
You say: “…he [Gleick] can safely tell them [his lawyers] the truth…” and then spell out one very damning version of the truth he could “safely” tell. But here’s a potential problem. In a criminal case, the defendant never has to testify. In reference to the California criminal statute quoted in a comment up-thread, Gleick’s own admitted conduct easily falls within the statutory language. If charged (a big “if” in California), he would likely plead guilty. But in a civil case, he can’t refuse to be deposed or to testify at trial if called to do so by the plaintiff. At least, he cannot without severe consequences in that civil action. But what, on your scenario, he told his lawyers is very damaging. If he now gets on the stand and says something different than he said to his lawyers, then, in most jurisdictions, his lawyers have an ethical duty not to just sit there and let him commit perjury and perpetrate a fraud on the court.
What would they be duty bound to do? At the very least, to call for a recess during which they should first counsel him to withdraw his perjurous statement(s). If he refuses and insists on continuing his false testimony, then, depending on the jurisdiction and the ethical rules in place, different things could be required. It used to be the majority view that the lawyers must bring the inconsistencies to the attention of the court. That is no longer the view in most jurisdictions. Rather, defense counsel should immediately make application to the court to withdraw as counsel without immediately specifying the grounds. This throws the matter into the judge’s lap. There are many things that could happen from that point on depending on the particular langauge of the relevant ethical rules and its interpretation in that jurisdiction and the temperment of the sitting judge.
If defense counsel do nothing to fulfill their ethical duties, and later (perrhaps unlikely) this comes out, those lawyers may be in a lot of trouble. [There is a way around this problem for Gleick and his current lawyers if he has already unburdened his conscience to them, but as the poet says, “I will shirk it, you will not like it, and God does not live to explain.”]
harrywr2 (Comment #91151)
Les Johnson (Comment #91176)
The PDF contains both a ‘photocopy’ and an OCR scan as separate layers. Open it in Photoshop and you will see them both.
The text in the ‘photocopy’ looks messy and should have fold marks but doesn’t. The OCR layer is searchable and can be copied, complete with its OCR conversion errors.
Leigh B. Kelley (Comment #91183),
I assume from your comments that you are a practicing criminal lawyer. Please correct me if I am wrong.
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In any case, unless Gleick has confided in others, and they are willing to testify against him, for all practical purposes, no matter what he tells his lawyers (even if admitting fraud!) those lawyers seem to me pretty safe from consequences. Maybe I have a jaded view of the legal profession, but I am old, and have been around quite enough to know that the actions of lawyers often seems contrary to their obligations as an officer of the court. Feel free to correct me if you think my impression is not correct.
SteveF @ Comment 91186:
I am not a practicing criminal lawyer, but I have seen a number of depictions of them on T.V. I am a lawyer, just retired thank God! I have done some criminal work.
There is a missing premise in your reply, viz., that lawyers, or many lawyers, will violate their ethical obligations in the sort of situation we are considering. I have no way to quantify that. I know some who would not, indeed have not. But are there a large number – “many” – who would and do? I am inclined to say “yes.”
But here is the “red raw” meat: The real $ in this case is in the defense of the civil action should it be brought. Your client first comes into the office. You generally don’t instruct him: “Tell me everything about what you did, how you did it, etc.” You analyze his “confession”, assuming that was made before the first consultation, and thence from there by indirection find direction out. “I want you to answer exactly and without elaboration [provide examples of unwanted “elaboration”] just the questions I ask you.” To go any further, I will require a retainer. I do not want to help Mr. Gleick. I do not want to say more about the legal profession until – shortly – I flat out resign from my local state bar. Not just become “inactive” – I am already that – but flat out resign. Does all of this answer your queries?
Leigh B. Kelley (Comment #91193) ,
“Does all of this answer your queries?”
Yes. Criminal lawyers exist in a difficult environment. As an officer of the court, they are obliged to one master. As a counsel for the defense, they are obliged to another. This is not something I would want for myself. But I think the truth is that criminal attorneys do in fact turn a blind eye to the obvious and often confessed guilt of their clients. I have no real problem with that, but I sure wish criminal attorneys would fess up and directly admit it publicly. Do they often act against the interests of the public? You bet they do!
This is the price we (the public) pay for a legal system of presumed innocence and guaranteed right to counsel. A lesser of evils, if you will.
SteveF @91193
To act against the interests of the publc. (?) THE Thread rolls on. This is a great problem with blogs and threads. Claims are made. Time passes quickly. But often to respond rationally, thoughtfully, requires study, review, thought. By that time, the post/thread is dead – none (or few ) ever come back. Monstrously linear these things are.
I know that I would be more severe than you in my indictment of our current legal system, but SteveF, this is a very difficult question: What about systems, organizations, laws, rules of procedure, all the rest? What would you say if Eric Holder had that sway? viz., X is against the public interest. More is needed.
None of this really contradicts what you say.
Leigh B. Kelley (Comment #91207),
When I said “against the public interest”, that was in the narrow sense: a person known by his attorney to be guilty goes free of his crime. In the broader sense, attorney-client privilege and presumption of innocence do indeed serve the public interest, in that they ensure prosecutors do not abuse the power they have been granted by the public. That the system almost inevitably, and seemingly by design, leads to some of the guilty escaping the consequences of their actions, is problematic. That innocents might suffer undeserved punishment under a different system is much worse. It is like democracy: perhaps imperfect, but much better than any of the alternatives. I do not wish to portray this as a simple issue, it clearly is not. But honestly, I could not be a defense attorney.
Nick Stokes (Comment #90984),
Just for the record, Nick, I think you are completely mistaken: almost certainly it was Gleick who did the whole deal: gaining the documents vial false representation, creating the fake “strategy” document based on what he received, sending the fake plus the real docs off to climate blogs; everything. I hope you can man up (at some point) and say just how inappropriate, unprincipled, and unlawful Gleick’s actions have been (if only based only on what he has admitted to so far). Please don’t let everyone down Nick, show us that you are not a shill for the left wing loonies.
SteveF (Comment #91218)
.”I hope you can man up (at some point) and say just how inappropriate, unprincipled, and unlawful Gleick’s actions have been,”
I don’t know if they were unlawful; time will tell. They were, as admitted, certainly inappropriate and wrong. In just the same way as FOIA.
Can you manage that much?
“Well, Mosher was right. Heartland owes you quite a bit for that great detective insight and unraveling this in such a short period of time.”
I only take credit for recognizing on first read that Gleick was the author. After that, people started to supply other facts. At the urging of Steve McINtyre I read the document a second time, that’s when the style popped up as well as the plagarism. All told I spent less than an hour on it. Basically to show Tobis and the fools what an hours worth of work would have saved them. Oh and document properties thing. First thing I looked at, always. others provided bits about the tweets, the the time zone, the 990. But I knew* it was Gleick the minute I saw his name in it. had to be, who in their right mind would describe him as a high profile climate scientist.
*Of course thats just my opinion, I’ve been wrong before.
What horrifies me the most in this whole sordid affair is the degree to which people who you might think ought to be rational, well educated, well informed – sane – and who purport to espouse liberal ideals are willing to rationalize and even lionize Gleick’s actions – witness S. Salmoney’s several comments over at DotEarth. Shocking.
This reminded me of a passage from Romanian Philosopher E.M. Coiran’s Precis de Décomposition, rendered [very roughly] into English:
“Ideas should be neutral, but man animates them with his passions and follies. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated.
Thus are born ideologies, doctrines and bloody farce.”
or for those who care in the original French:
En elle-même toute idea est neutre, ou devrait l’etre:
mais l’homme l’anime y projette ses flammes et ses démences;
impure, transformée en croyane, elle s’insére dans le temps.
prende figure d’événement:
Le passage de la logique à l’épilepsie est consommé…
Ainsi naissent les idéologies, les doctrines, et les farces sanglantes.
~E.M. Coiran
Precis de Décomposition
[M’excuser s’il y a une erreur, la mémoire est cruelle, et je n’ai pas l’original sous la main.]
for those unfamiliar:
W^3
It seems that the ‘climate wars’ we are living through have already descended into “bloody farce.”
Those who have descended into such self-serving rationalization and self-delusion would be well recommended to remember that History is unkind to such personalities.
HISTORY WILL BURY YOU
W^3
>I suppose you all want to know who I fingered as FOIA on day 1?
Now, why would you post that? Unless you have already revealed this name to authorities, in which case it didn’t pan out. If not, then in posting this, you are inviting more questioning. Seems like Id and McIntyre would give up the name. How about you?
Based on hints you dropped few moths ago, I think I know who you hinted at the first time around. However, I have no way of verifying as I would never send it via e-mail, and probably not even in person. I’ve already posted what my response would be to law enforcement questions on the subject.
My guess is that FOIA was an insider and the email dump was personal.
Steve Mosher,
The fact that you picked up on the guy’s style so quickly is amazing. I think it is quite possible that when Heartland receives the original faked document, ceaseless, etc., Gleick will have tossed his own printer in the garbage.
It wouldn’t help the Peter as he has undoubtedly used his printer before. Of course your points about his apparent narcissism are well taken and he may have considered his exposure.
Paper type, printer type, rescan on the same machine.
If he did it, Heartland will be able to shred him for it. Steve McIntyre suggested nobody revel in Peter’s decline, I’m less romantic on the matter. The man was dishonest already and I fully intend to turn him in for tax fraud under 501C3 rules. It is likely a waste of time but that won’t stop me.
I also have some interesting two way emails written to another 501c about adopting an extremist like Peter to the board. I called them politically tone deaf and warned them that adopting climate change extremists in addition to their own cause would wreck their credibility. — This was less than 1 month ago.
I wrote back to them last night to remind them that they had been warned!
ivp0 (Comment #91232)
My guess is that FOIA is the person behind the hacking of the CRU and Realclimate servers by providing the funding, and the anonymous donor that keeps Heartland in business.
Dear Bugs @ 91237
Your “guess” reads more like paranoid delusion, you wish it were true, you hope it is true, it fulfills all of your paranoid intuitions, but it is based on no logical train of thinking or observation of the facts – but maybe I’m wrong and you have astute observations of the evidences and a well developed line of reasoning that you have been working on for the last two years that once you reveal it to the world will prove to be as tack-drivingly accurate as Steve Mosher’s was in fingering Peter Gleick days in advance of his [partial] confession.
History also judges the paranoid harshly, it will bury you as well.
We are all acting in this moment of history in-process, but what we do and say and the character with which we act them out will be remembered and judged by posterity [even me].
W^3
PS – in case I ever decide to pull a Gleick I can be easily identified by the narcissistic self-reference, the hysterical sense of moral outrage, and the hyperactive use of the hyphen 😉
@Jeff Condon
I fully agree with Steve McIntyre, we shouldn’t gloat in disaster. We should fully unravel this event, but the man was still a scientist and simply lost his head in passion. That can happen to a lot of good people.
An important tale to learn from.
For McIntyre, it’s all gloating. Every topic on his website is gloating about something. That’s why he is still going on about the hockey stick.
Well, if any man has something to gloat about…
bugs (Comment #91237)
February 22nd, 2012 at 5:23 am
My guess is that FOIA is the person behind the hacking of the CRU and Realclimate servers by providing the funding, and the anonymous donor that keeps Heartland in business.
The number one supplier of oil and gas to the EU-27 is Russia. The number two supplier of coal to the EU-27 is Russia.
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/eu-27-imports-of-natural-gas-crude-oil-hard-coal-and-the-sum-of-these-by-country-of-origin-as-a-of-primary-energy-consumption
It would definitely be an interesting development if a Right Wing group in the US was being funded by the ‘Godless Communists’ in Russia.
harrywr2 –
In the immediate aftermath of Climategate, IPCC vice-chair van Ypersele suggested that it was the work of Russians; while he didn’t specifically name the FSB, they were mentioned in other articles at the time. And now we hear* that they are behind Heartland!
Of course, we know they’re trying to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.
Nick Stokes (Comment #91225),
Nick, FOIA was (I suspect) motivated by the illegitimate thwarting of quite legitimate requests for actual (not false) documents under the applicable FOIA statues for public records. Hence, the selected nom de plume.
.
Please tell me where you think the Heartland institute thwarted legal requests for public information. As usual, you draw utterly false comparisons and suggest equivalency where there is none. When it becomes obvious that Dr. Gleick fabricated the fake document as well (and I am quite certain it will), will you still cling to some kind of fig-leaf equivalency to FOIA, or will you finally admit that that there is no rational comparison?
.
I note, Nick, that Dr. Gleick concluded it was OK to publicly divulge personal information about private individuals who work for the Heartland Institute, even if in 20 minutes all that personal information could have been redacted. His actions were carefully designed to injure those who work for Heartland. Do you image that is roughly equivalent to FOIA’s careful non-disclosure of personal information in the UEA emails?
.
Face it Nick, there is no comparison. One acts on principle, the other acts like a worm, and is a worm. As usual, you amaze me with your obtuse thinking about simple subjects.
Steve,
No, the cases are very similar. The UEA emails had not been sought under FOI. It’s true that some people had worked themselves into a lather over other FOI applications, but the fact is that there is a prescribed process for those which was taking its course. You can’t raid the place just because they are pursuing arguments which you don’t like in a proper forum.
Anyway, I’m sure Gleick had a long list of grievances with Heartland.
There’s plenty of personal information in the UEA emails. WUWT, for example, front-paged a reference Briffa wrote for a student.
Nick Stokes,
“There’s plenty of personal information in the UEA emails.”
Your are delusional. I will no longer communicate with you. Bye forever.
@Bugs,
I… really suggest you open a dictionary and look up the word “gloating”. To quote from Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”